Found in Translation
by girl undone
Summary: Because, for Commander Rachel Shepard and Garrus Vakarian, love means patience, compromise, and understanding. Even when one purposely make the other's translator glitch. Rated for language and vague xeno-sexual situations.


Human beds, Garrus Vakarian thought, as soft and wide as they were, had absolutely no support for the cowl and broad shoulders that came with a turian's physique. _Cushy_. That was the word she used to describe the bed. _'Prietzteh'_ she had muttered after Miranda complained about Gardner's cooking. '_Shmuck'_ she had laughed, nodding her head in understanding when Tali explained to her what _bosh'tet_ meant.

_Meyn leibe_. She only ever said that to him.

Commander Rachel Shepard drove him, and sometimes the crew, half-mad with words and phrases that didn't translate, whether purposefully or not. It was those strange, harsh-sounding noises she used that no one could understand, that even made Joker shrug, that sounded the sweetest to him. They were gutteral, like his own language, but without the natural flanging or rumbling. She had explained to him, when asked, that the language, called Yiddish, was particular to the area of Earth her ancestors came from before resettling to the city she was born in over two hundred and forty years later. She told him that now it was a dead tongue, comprised of, in her opinion, the most discordant languages ever established on Earth: Hebrew, German, Polish, Russian, and several others. _Phlegmy, guttural, harsh languages with no music to them._ _You should hear the songs! _she had exclaimed. Well, she was entitled to her opinion, he supposed, but to him, the words were dulcet. He would have rather liked to hear her sing one- provided he'd ever hear her sing when she wasn't in an incredibly bad mood. With the Hammerhead replacing the much-maligned Mako, this didn't seem any likelier.

* * *

"No, Garrus, look at me. I want _you_." Her voice was soft, but heady. She was cupping his mandibles forcing eye contact. He didn't know how she knew he was holding back. Maybe she had watched those vids Mordin had sent them both, it seemed, aeons ago. Maybe she sneaked a peak at an article in _Fornax_ when she was buying fish food. Maybe she just knew him that well. But there they were, her back up against wall, her long legs, already chaffed, wrapped around his waist, completely trusting him not to drop her. To have her six all the time.

He saw her eyes, that alien hue of greenish-grey so trusting of him, so absolute in her faith of him. His mandibles fluttered under her touch. He tried to look away, but there was nowhere to look that wasn't her soft flesh, that wouldn't remind him she was human and breakable. All he saw were his taloned fingers gripping her hips with half his strength so he wouldn't pierce the skin. In so much as a turian could sound like they were mumbling, he demurred, "I don't want to hurt you."

She laughed, as though the thought amused her. He couldn't help looking up at her face at the sound. The way her face moved so elastically to show her humour. The rare sound of genuine laughter- as opposed to her usual sarcastic wit that the rest of of galaxy was privy to or victim of- that he cherished. She tilted her head, capturing his cobalt gaze, the skin around her eyes showing her smile to be true. "I'm not easily broken."

_"But you died."_ He didn't say aloud, but she read it. Maybe when he broke eye contact, maybe when looked down and saw, despite the lotions and the allergy pills, her white skin was decidedly red where she had the most contact with his plates.

She didn't like to talk about it. He had been there once, in that uncomfortable bed, when she had started shrieking, unable to breathe when he woke her up. She said it was a nightmare; she wouldn't say more. But he had heard what she had been shrieking. "Well," she added, her tone was now falsely cheerful, "I have skin weave and bone weave and a few extra bits and pieces. I'm extra-durable now."

He growled, his eyes flashing up to hers, angrier than he meant to sound. _And Spirits if that didn't encourage her more!_ She wriggled against him, as though he needed reminding of the task in his taloned hands. "Rachel..." he began warningly. He made a move as though to set her down, but she clung to him, all limbs wrapped around cowl and waist, like pyjack on a tree branch.

"I trust you. I love you."

Still, she tried so hard to accommodate him, with her blunt teeth and soft fingernails, and he loved her for it. She never tried to force wet, sloppy kisses against his rigid mouth or complained when her skin turned an angry red from contact with his plates. He opened his mouth to reply that it was this newly named, if long-felt emotion between them, which stopped him every time. But then she said something so odd that he thought she was purposefully making his translator glitch again. It was guttural, like the language she sometimes used a phrase for, but... no. He understood it, despite the lack of flanging, the intonation never reaching the proper pitch, her accent further distorting the words, because it was in his own tongue.

_"I love you." _

It was imperfect, yet so confident; so completely Shepard. He looked up at her in such a sudden way that her smugly flirtatious expression instantly turned to flustered worry. "Oh G-d, I said it wrong, didn't I? Fuck! I should have never trusted that VI translat... _ungh!"_

_

* * *

_

He had insisted on the sheet if she were to use him as a pillow. Her expression had gone from the beatific grin he had given her to one of utter annoyance. She was eager for his warm plates and reverberating voice to lull her to sleep. But he was persistent, just as she had been. "You talked me into _that_," he gestured, embarrassed, to the red punctures his teeth left in her neck and breast, the red trails, well, _everywhere_ from his talons. She had made a face of discontentment before acquiescing. "Maybe I like it." Her voice was still coy to his disbelief.

He held her close as she settled against him and said something that, for once, made her translator glitch. She lifted her head lazily to prop her chin on his chest. She reached up to bat at him playfully. "That's my game. What did you say?"

His mandibles flared in a grin down at her. "Aren't you tired yet?"

She had made a frustrated noise and demanded again, "What did you say?"

His mandibles twitched wider. "I said you're filthy, but I love you anyway."

She made a face of disgruntled amusement and seemed to retort something that definitely made his translator glitch. "_Bey mir bist du sheyn, meyn leibe_." And she had flopped her head back on his chest, not even groaning at the hard contact between her cheek and his chest plates.

"Did you just call me... what was that word you told Tali pretty much meant _bosh'tet? Shmuck?"_

She had laughed that laugh again._ Maybe it's just for me_, he indulged the thought. "No, but you're acting like one now." He huffed and she said continued, not bothering to look up, but whispering the words into his chest instead. "It means, 'to me you're beautiful, my love'."

His ran his taloned hand through her hair. "I don't think you're so tired after all."

She turned her head to look up at him, all half-veiled eyes and husky-voiced. "I've been trying to tell you that, _Officer Vakarian._"

* * *

"_Meyn leibe,_" she sighed luxuriously, curling up against him like a kitten. 'Kitten' had naturally translated; long ago his omni-tool provided pictures of the infant cats from Earth. Moments, and hours before, she had claimed he sounded like a big kitten, but as he ran his talons through her sweat-darkened hair, curling naturally as it dried in the cool air of the loft, he thought she looked decidedly kittenish. Graceful, stealthy, lithe on the battlefield; playful, teasing... flexible, off. Now snuggled- another new word- against his carapace in what looked like a thoroughly uncomfortable position for any human, let alone a naked one, she had a smile on her face that reminded him of that oft-used human expression of 'the cat who got the cream'.

Sure, the human bed was uncomfortable for a turian, but there was no where else, with no other person, he'd rather be.

* * *

A/N: Don't flame me, as I have nothing against the languages mentioned! It's all in her opinion that they aren't pretty to hear! For reference, 'cushy' is not Yiddish, but English slang. It's derived from the Hindi word '_ḵẖuś_, meaning 'pleasant', which, in turn, is borrowed from the Persian word '_khush_' meaning 'good, excellent'. I also used Standard Yiddish to type these words and phrases. For those interested, Standard Yiddish is simply what linguists have decided is the proper spelling and pronunciation of this much varied, transliterated language. There really is no right or wrong way to write a Yiddish word with the English alphabet. Also, those who like swing music or ice dancing might recognise the phrase 'bey mir bist du sheyn' as 'Bei Mir Bist Du Schon' an English song with a quasi-German title made popular by the Andrew Sisters in the late 1930's. If you'd like to hear the song in its original Yiddish form, just PM me. Finally, I took liberties on what the turian language might sound like. Perhaps Bioware will let us hear it next time!


End file.
